Saturday, March 31, 2012

Johnathan Janz's first novel, The Sorrows, is a serviceable, entertaining work with Gothic trappings and a mythical beast that always invokes a primal fear. In the same vein as the late Richard Layman and especially Edward Lee's work, The Sorrows is capably written, though it does suffer a flaw or two. However, the characterization and prose is strong enough to carry the day, making it a solid representative of the new horror line emerging from Samhain Publishing.

Film score composers Ben and Eddie are desperately looking for a place to produce music for their latest film project. Award winning composers quickly rising in the film industry, they face a daunting obstacle in Ben's recent inability to compose any music. Suffering through a terrible divorce, torn at the possibility of losing his son, Ben faces even worse news: that his ex-wife and son Joshua are moving out of state to be with her new lover. The clock is ticking, not only for their overdue musical score, but for Ben's involvement in Joshua's life.

And then they discover what seems like the perfect solution: a month-long stay at The Sorrows, an island off the coast of California, which boasts Castle Blackwood, the site of unexplained murders taking place in 1925. Gothic, foreboding, eerie...the perfect place to find inspiration for a horror movie's musical score. Bringing with them a beautiful, exotic aspiring actress in Eva and a shy, demure aspiring composer in Claire, the scenario seems ripe for romantic encounters, also.

But they aren't as alone at Castle Blackwood as they think. A foul spirit - residual of the mysterious events of 1925 - hides in the depths of Castle Blackwood, in the caves near the beach, and in the waters itself. It's not long before the foursome experience terrible nightmares, waking visions and phantasmagoric experiences that quickly enough become far more than just inspiration for a horror movie's musical score.

It becomes their inspiration for fear.

But fear is only the tip of the iceberg, because something lurks in the bowels of Castle Blackwood. An ancient creature that lusts for flesh and blood, a monster bent on destruction and depravity. And all four of these unfortunate visitors harbor more than enough personal demons for it to feast on and grow strong.

To bring their worst nightmares come true.

The Sorrows' greatest strength is its prose and characterization, especially in Ben Shadeland. His grief and agony over losing his son rings especially true, and The Sorrows indeed boasts a strong cast of likeable and unlikable characters. And the prose itself is clean, tight, and flows well. Janz also transitions well between the present day narrative and more formal diary entries dating back to 1925, without giving away too much.

It's not a perfect novel, by any means. There are some improbabilities - characters suffering seemingly serious wounds, only to shrug them off and engage in incredible physical feats - and some of the plot late in the novel seems a bit contrived. However, the novel's strengths outweigh its weaknesses, making The Sorrows definitely worth the read.

Kevin Lucia is a Contributing Editor for Shroud Magazine and a blogger for The Midnight Diner. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He's
currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at
Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives
in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children. He is
the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles, and he's currently working on his first novel. Visit him on the web at www.kevinlucia.com.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

There are places in this world that are "out of the way". Hiding in the cracks, off the beaten path. These places exist in-between worlds. We've all been there, one time or another...or perhaps only driven near them, but near enough to know these places felt different. Odd. Out of...place. The kind of places where anything could happen.

And usually we only recall these places after we've left. Once gone, we try to return, only to find that these places are never exactly as they were when we first visited them...or they're not there at all, anymore. They are places beyond us, places we can barely remember but can't completely forget...but are never able to return to.

These are the emotions so often invoked by Alan Peter Ryan's work. A critically acclaimed travel writer with literary inclinations and a speculative bent, Ryan's work in Cemetery Dance's forthcoming four-story collection, The Back of Beyond is subtle, unnerving, and disquieting. Not all the stories deliver the same punch, but as a whole, it's a collection that perfectly invokes that reverence...or maybe even fear...of places "off the beaten path."

The two strongest tales are "Starvation Alley" and "Mountain Man," the former about a middle-aged father trying to bridge the gap between him and his estranged son, on a cross-country trip that unfortunately doesn't work out the way he'd been hoping. Along the way, they visit a diner called Janey's, a place too good to be real...perhaps literally.

The best story is, without a doubt, "Mountain Man", featuring two characters of whom I hope we'll see more of posthumously, that of Beauchamp and Trask, two cowboys who have the knack of running across rather "odd" things in the great wild west. Imagine a weird western co-written by Zane Grey and Robert E. Howard, and that's what you get in Beauchamp and Trask.

In this case, it's an old feller come down out of the mountains, a ragged old boy, with a crazed gleam in his eyes, dark stains around his mouth, who mutters "Might eat you...most likely will." With the best of intentions, Beauchamp and Trask bring him back to their compound...but things go bad quick, as it turns out the old boy's madness is infectious.

Literally. And Trask and Beauchamp are called upon to handle it as only they can.

Kevin Lucia is a Contributing Editor for Shroud Magazine and a blogger for The Midnight Diner. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He's
currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at
Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives
in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children. He is
the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles, and he's currently working on his first novel. Visit him on the web at www.kevinlucia.com.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

It's almost an iron-clad guarantee: reading Ronald Malfi's work will send shivers down your spine, fill you with a sense of unsettling disquiet...but it will also, ultimately, break your heart. Because - aside from his smooth, often lyrical prose - that's one of Malfi's greatest talents: invoking emotion.

His characters are often lost, fractured, wandering souls whose quests for meaning and significance so nearly mirrors our own, genre becomes secondary. This is why Malfi has enjoyed such success in switching from "horror" novels like Snow and The Floating Staircase to suspense/thrillers like Shamrock Alley, to even more experimental novels like Passenger: characters that readers feel real empathy for, not only because they're so well constructed...

...but maybe because they remind us all something of ourselves, too.

And it's no different in his novella from Samhain Publishing, Borealis. The genre elements are there, of course. But it's the human element that makes it stand out from all the dross.

Charlie Mears is at a wrenching cross-roads. Crabbing and the sea runs in his blood. It's what he does, trawling the waters, working in the biting cold, making a living on the cold dark sea. But it's also cost him his marriage, and may prevent him from seeing his son ever again. Tired of long weeks - even months - away from home, his wife has left him, taking his son too. Charlie must choose between the only thing he knows how to do well and leaving it behind to find his son, perhaps salvage what he can of his family.

But very soon, Charlie has other things to worry about on the Borealis. Like the impossible, mysterious, child-like - and damned odd - woman they rescue off the ridge of a passing iceberg. A naked woman.

Who has no name. No memory of where she ultimately comes from. And deep, emotionless black eyes that look very deep into a person.

Perhaps too deep.

And then things go bad aboard the Borealis. Engines and navigation and heating systems malfunctioning. Men turn up missing. The very air itself seems foul. Because they've brought something terrible aboard the Borealis, and just as much as they want to get back to the mainland, back to civilization, Charlie realizes with a growing sense of horror...

...that's what the woman wants, also.Borealis is a haunting work. But it's haunting because of Charlie Mears. Because of his situation, as we realize that even as his intense love for his son shields him from the cold malevolence they've accidentally brought aboard the Borealis, it's a tragic love...one he may not ever express again. And tragedy - thus invoking catharsis - is something Ron Malfi does better than anyone else.

Kevin Lucia is a Contributing Editor for Shroud Magazine and a blogger for The Midnight Diner. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He's
currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at
Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives
in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children. He is
the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles, and he's currently working on his first novel. Visit him on the web at www.kevinlucia.com.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

The 1970s were marked by their
violently stark contrast to the optimism and civil consciousness of the
previous decade. Crime was on the rise, as was poverty. The war in
Southeast Asia had already bubbled over into a full-scale
disaster. Even the arts, especially film, were grittier and bleaker than
the relatively tame 1960s. In The Dreamt and Deathless Obscene,
Andrew Bonazelli capitalizes on the atmosphere of the period and increases
the stakes, making 1975 the setting of a post-apocalyptic
nightmare.

In 1973, an event occurred that changed
the face of the earth. This event is not described in any great
detail, but essentially separated the world into the three classes:
regular folks, the afflicted, and the unsound. The unsound are the most
obviously changed. Diseased and depraved slaves to their carnal and
violent desires, they roam about attacking anyone and anything in their
path. The afflicted apparently have some form of the disease that
created the unsound. They live in the quarantined cities under an
Orwellian program to ease their “unnatural” appetites and desires.
In the meantime, other folks try to pick up the pieces of their lives
outside the shattered urban zones and the violent anarchy of the
countryside.

The novel follows the lives of Allan,
Neil, Rosie, and Sophie, and occasionally Walter, as they try to
make sense of their lives in a shattered Philadelphia. Allan and Neil
are brothers, sons of Walter, who handle the situation in very
different ways. Allan is emotionally stunted and self-absorbed while Neil is
choosing the ill-advised path of starting a family with his pregnant
fiancée, Rosie. Sophie was Allan’s girlfriend before the
affliction began and now lives in the quarantine zone with the other
afflicted, where she takes her turn manning the “touchline” phone
service used by its citizens to achieve release. Walter generally just falls
back to old memories of football from before the end times.

Bonazelli’s writing is crisp and
lively and displays a unique voice—though occasionally dances on
the line between style and affectation. Further, he truly captures
the emotional and physical wasteland that his characters inhabit.
Unfortunately, those characters are largely unsympathetic and are not
moved in any meaningful way by the plot. Events happen, but the
characters—and the plot—simply tread water. Nothing truly changes in their
lives. The plot doesn’t really begin to move from exposition to
conflict until the final third of the narrative, setting the reader up for an
ending that doesn’t really happen. The story simply stops.

The true shame is that the final third
of the book introduces some characters and ideas that would have
been more interesting to explore than the central characters of the
novel. Even gonzo wordsmithery cannot save a novel from a shallow
plot. Unfortunately, this novel suffers for it, essentially showcasing
a place where uninteresting characters wallow in the bleakness of
their landscape.

Shedrick Pittman-Hassett is a
full-time librarian and part-time writer trying to do that the other
way around. He has written reviews for Library Journal and has also
had two articles published in the award-winning Knights of the Dinner
Table magazine. Shedrick currently resides in Denton, Texas ("The
Home of Happiness") with his lovely wife and the obligatory
demon-spawn cats. When not writing, gaming, or watching cheezy
kung-fu flicks, he can be found in a pub enjoying a fine brew.

Friday, March 23, 2012

The Oxford Companion to English literature calls Ramsey
Campbell Britain's "most respected living horror writer", and Ancient Images, a
Samhain Publishing re-print of one of Campbell's earlier novels, bears
excellent testimony to this assertion. As with all of Campbell's works,
the prose is smooth, his attention to detail immaculate, and the
tension winds tighter and tighter as the story progresses.

Campbell's pacing is also excellent, as he slowly builds a solid
foundation upon which to sprint toward the novel's end. An enthralling
read, one that evokes very primal emotions - fear of the dark, of
isolation, and of the things we can't see moving in the shadows, hiding
just beyond the light's reach.

After her friend and co-worker dies under mysterious circumstances, film
editor Sandy Allen embarks upon a quest to unearth a mythic film, a
lost horror-movie starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. It was this
film she was to screen with her friend the night of his death, and, much
as she can't prove it, Sandy can't shake the feeling that her friend
died BECAUSE of this film... and not just because someone killed her friend to steal the lost film.

But because the film itself brought death to him.

Every step Sandy takes closer to the film's secrets - interviewing
retired actors, camera men, descendents of those involved in the film's
production - Sandy senses something
drawing closer to her. Shadows become figures dogging her steps at
night. Windblown branches claw at her windows like talons. And
when Sandy is finally drawn to the small community whose history
provided the basis for the film, Redfield - a harvest community whose
past is drenched in bloodshed - Sandy realizes she may have stumbled
upon an ages-old power that will not only do anything to cover its
tracks....

But will also kill to continue its legacy.

For Redfield's rich soil is thirsty, once again. It demands to be sated. And just about anyone's blood will do.

Horror comes in many shapes and sizes, and the genre's big enough for all kinds of tastes, but it's always refreshing to know there still exists writers like Campbell, who can invoke fear simply through the power of excellent story-telling, through emotional cues, creating psychological disquiet subtly, with great care and restraint. And this is also a nice homage to movies and the enduring power of their stories and images, how they preserve things...as well as a haunting concept.

Kevin Lucia is a Contributing Editor for Shroud Magazine and a blogger for The Midnight Diner. His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. He's
currently finishing his Creative Writing Masters Degree at
Binghamton University, he teaches high school English and lives
in Castle Creek, New York with his wife and children. He is
the author of Hiram Grange & The Chosen One, Book Four of The Hiram Grange Chronicles, and he's currently working on his first novel. Visit him on the web at www.kevinlucia.com.